Overview
Since the 2015-2016 season, Manchester City has never participated in the Champions League without Pep Guardiola on the coaching bench. Therefore, the away match against Porto marked a new milestone for Enzo Maresca.
Maresca once helped Chelsea win the Conference League in the 2024-2025 season. After that, he led the London team through 6 Champions League matches in the second half of 2025, with 3 wins, 1 draw and 2 defeats. Among them was a 3-0 victory over Barcelona.
Man City started the season with a 0-3 defeat to Arsenal in the English Super Cup match. However, Maresca's team quickly responded with a 3-match winning streak in the Premier League against Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Coventry City.
Erling Haaland was the one who brought the nearest victory for Man City. The Norwegian striker scored the only goal in the match against Coventry, and also reached the milestone of 300 goals in his career and surpassed Sergio Aguero's scoring record at Man City. However, Frank Lampard's team still created no small difficulties for Man City and forced Gianluigi Donnarumma to make important saves.
Donnarumma's performance helped Man City have their first clean sheet match in all competitions this season. However, away form in the Champions League is still a problem that Maresca must pay attention to. The Citizens have only won 2 and lost 6 in their last 9 away matches in this tournament.
Meanwhile, Porto returned to the Champions League after 2 years of absence. The last time the Portuguese team participated in the tournament was in the 2023-2024 season, when they were eliminated by Arsenal in the round of 16 after a penalty shootout.
The next two seasons did not bring much success for Porto in the Europa League. They were eliminated by Roma in the 2024-2025 season play-offs, before stopping in front of Nottingham Forest in the quarter-finals last season. Regaining the Primeira Liga championship in the 2025-2026 season helped Porto return to the most prestigious playground in Europe.
This is Porto's 28th time participating in the Champions League group stage. Only Bayern Munich with 30 times, Real Madrid and Barcelona with the same 31 times have more participation times.
Porto is also in very good form under Francesco Farioli. After defeating Torreense 1-0 in the Portuguese Super Cup, they won all 5 of their first Primeira Liga matches, scoring 11 goals and conceding only 1 goal against Alverca, Rio Ave, Arouca, Viseu and Moreirense.
However, head-to-head history is not on Porto's side. The Portuguese team has never defeated Man City in an official match.
In the last 4 encounters in European competitions, Porto lost 3 matches and only had 1 draw. That draw took place in December 2020 in the Champions League group stage with a score of 0-0.
Expected lineup:
D. Costa, A. Costa, Perez, Kiwior, Moura, Fofana, Rosario, Veiga, Gomes, Silva, Pepe.
Man City: Donnarumma, Nunes, Guehi, Dias, Ait-Nouri, Anderson, Bouaddi, Semenyo, Cherki, Foden, Haaland.
The match between Porto and Man City takes place at 2:00 AM on September 9 (Vietnam time).
